If you do not understand basic things: ask. There’s no such thing as a bad question, if you don’t understand something and the answer brings you closer to understanding.
I have found often, for instance, that people don’t understand shutter speed. Like “a one thousandth of a second is faster than an eight of a second”., At that stage I lose some people.
So here: shutter speeds explained in one small page.
Read that thoroughly if you are new to photography and all that tech talk confuses you. And if it is still not clear: ask more.
That’s how you learn, by asking. And that’s why I teach. Via Google Hangouts, if you aren’t local: I teach people all over the world, literally. And when most people say “literally”, they mean “not literally”. When I say “literally” I mean “literally”. 🙂 See http://learning.photography to learn more.
A note about the Rule of Thumb: one needs to consider the crop factor into that equation. If shooting with a m4/3 camera, the crop factor is 2x, thus turning a 50mm lens that could be handheld at 1/50 to a 100mm that should be shot at 1/125.
Yes, true. But remember, it is a rule of thumb, and such a rough one that I would not even bother. Some can shoot at 4x slower; some cannot shoot sharp at 4x faster speed. And because a rule of thumb should be simple by virtue of what it is, I avoid making it more complicated than absolutely necessary. Hence the simplification.